Editor:

Gillian Dooley
Honorary Research Fellow, English
Flinders University
c/- Central Library
GPO Box 2100
ADELAIDE SA 5001

email: Gillian.dooley@flinders.edu.au
tel: 08 8201 5238
fax: 08 8201 2508



Call for papers Special feature, November 2014

Philosophy and literature; philosophy as literature.

Guest editor: Kathryn Koromilas
Deadline 30 June 2014

Plato has given to all posterity the model of a new art form, the model of the novel.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.

Plato wrote both stories and argument as a way of investigating philosophical
problems. For Plato, the choice of literary form was essential to the quest for
philosophical truth. Ever since, philosophical reflection has found expression in
numerous literary forms, both creative and conventional. And so, we have Platonic
and Humean dialogues, Cartesian meditations, Enlightenment fables, Kierkegaardian
narratives, Nietzchean parables and aphorisms, Russellian mathematics,
Wittgensteinian tractatuses and investigations, as well as all the standard literary
forms of novels, novellas, poems, plays, and songs.
Transnational Literature is seeking papers for a special edition of the journal
which will be dedicated to the literary expression of philosophy. Rather than readings
of philosophy in literature (of mapping particular philosophical frameworks onto
works of literature), we invite explorations of philosophy as literature and we invite
these explorations to also address the journals transnational focus by exploring the
crossing of cultural, national and temporal boundaries.

The following ideas are of particular interest:

Philosophy and literature as embattled adversaries (Calvino) and the
breaking down of boundaries between philosophy and literature.
Philosophical fiction as an alternative mode of philosophical reflection and
investigation and/or experimental method. (George Eliots novels, for
example, as a set of experiments in life endeavour[s] to see what our
thought and emotion may be capable of.)
The use of literary devices in philosophical writing to express philosophical
facts / metaphysical truths. (Lockes metaphorical candle within us becomes
the factual intuition.)
http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/home.html

The use of literary devices in creative fiction to do the work of philosophy.
(Exposition as a way of interrupting narrative to keep reader attentive to the
task of enquiry. Point-of-view as ethical device. Ellipsis as getting to the
essential story.)
The literary merit of philosophical writing: a secondary concern to the primary
quest for truth?
The dialectic of abstraction and embodiment.
The literary form as the accurate expression of moral truths because of the
embodied and particular nature of moral philosophy. (Nussbaum.)
The importance of fiction, poetry and song for guiding thought, strengthening
observation, developing critical thinking. (Confucius.)
Authors who conceive of the novel as more than story; as a genre that brings
together every device and every form of knowledge in order to shed light on
existence. (Kundera on Broch. Also, Musil, Calvino, Coetzee, George Eliot.)
Philosophy as performance and philosophical plays.
Philosophers who also write literary fiction.
We also invite:

Creative writing that investigates an original philosophical problem.
Book reviews of relevant creative and scholarly works that explore the above
themes.
Submission guidelines

Articles should:

Be between 4000 and 6000 words in length, including footnotes.
Conform to the journals style guide available here:
http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/submissions.html
Be accompanied by abstract of about 200 words.
Be accompanied by an author biography of 150 words.
Be attached as a Microsoft Word document to an email addressed to Kathryn
Koromilas kathryn.koromilas@adelaide.edu.au. Please add subject line:
Submission TNL Philosophy as literature. Deadline for submissions 30 June
2014.

http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/home.html